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A review by books_and_cocktails_afterhours
The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu
5.0
This is my favorite collection of short stories ever! It took me ages to finish this book because I was reading a story a day, thinking about what I read and then, in some cases, researching some historical events that I had no idea about.
This mixes facts and reality with science-fiction in some brilliant but heartbreaking stories that make you think about the worst of humanity and if there’s a possibility of redemption at all. The science fiction elements are usually blended with historical hidden skeletons, most of which I had no knowledge until I read this book.
I could not go into detail about the short stories because I honestly believe you need to read them to be there, to feel as I’ve felt. Each is different but all at though provoking in a brutal way.
The last one, a documentary style story that mixed sci-fi with history from Japanese Unit 731, during World War II, who conducted inhuman lethal biological experiments in Chinese prisoners. Who should take responsibility for it? Do we have a responsibility to remember these terrible events from history? Who’s to blame? How could this happen at all?
This mixes facts and reality with science-fiction in some brilliant but heartbreaking stories that make you think about the worst of humanity and if there’s a possibility of redemption at all. The science fiction elements are usually blended with historical hidden skeletons, most of which I had no knowledge until I read this book.
I could not go into detail about the short stories because I honestly believe you need to read them to be there, to feel as I’ve felt. Each is different but all at though provoking in a brutal way.
The last one, a documentary style story that mixed sci-fi with history from Japanese Unit 731, during World War II, who conducted inhuman lethal biological experiments in Chinese prisoners. Who should take responsibility for it? Do we have a responsibility to remember these terrible events from history? Who’s to blame? How could this happen at all?